Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania): "Moue"
What a path it is, the one Mary could never follow me
down— the path of worldly largesse. When you take
worldly largesse and make it about the arts, what you
get is a hodgepodge of different ways creative people
can be big or not big. To win big, you have to lose big,
too. Lots of people are just fronts or pin-ups, being
told what to do. The creators for real are the creators
for real. By this time, moving in on the late Aughts,
Mary’s apartment, on Baltimore down from 4325, had
a fire escape where she could fit two chairs, and we’d
sit outside on nice days and chat. My talk about Chicago,
New York, London, Australia, was scenester talk. It took
for granted, being an in person on a fast track. Attendant
on being in, a fulsome load of log-rolling to do, all day every
day, so that I rolled logs to Mary, in front of Mary, in spite
of Mary, around Mary, and so on. I noticed what anyone
would notice. Mary just did not have it in her to harness
her queenly, court-honed instincts and put those logs into
rolling motion herself. There was a not a perpetual moue, but when
I spoke about scene in-matters, Mary gained a glazed, tuned-out
look, and tended to fixate her eyes on the diagonal steps
over our heads, that ended in the plateau on which we sat.
No view, but a small space from another, differently angled
portion of the same ten-story building, Mary being on
the seventh floor. An interesting composition, linear structure
for Mary to look at. More interesting than what I heard about
the feud tearing apart the East Village, or my own feuds,
which were substantial. Mary was meant, we both discovered, just to paint.
© Adam Fieled 2026
down— the path of worldly largesse. When you take
worldly largesse and make it about the arts, what you
get is a hodgepodge of different ways creative people
can be big or not big. To win big, you have to lose big,
too. Lots of people are just fronts or pin-ups, being
told what to do. The creators for real are the creators
for real. By this time, moving in on the late Aughts,
Mary’s apartment, on Baltimore down from 4325, had
a fire escape where she could fit two chairs, and we’d
sit outside on nice days and chat. My talk about Chicago,
New York, London, Australia, was scenester talk. It took
for granted, being an in person on a fast track. Attendant
on being in, a fulsome load of log-rolling to do, all day every
day, so that I rolled logs to Mary, in front of Mary, in spite
of Mary, around Mary, and so on. I noticed what anyone
would notice. Mary just did not have it in her to harness
her queenly, court-honed instincts and put those logs into
rolling motion herself. There was a not a perpetual moue, but when
I spoke about scene in-matters, Mary gained a glazed, tuned-out
look, and tended to fixate her eyes on the diagonal steps
over our heads, that ended in the plateau on which we sat.
No view, but a small space from another, differently angled
portion of the same ten-story building, Mary being on
the seventh floor. An interesting composition, linear structure
for Mary to look at. More interesting than what I heard about
the feud tearing apart the East Village, or my own feuds,
which were substantial. Mary was meant, we both discovered, just to paint.
© Adam Fieled 2026
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